The other day I spoke to a client who told me that all marketing activities had been put on hold because of decreased sales, and an enforced ‘tightening of belts’. Their market was buying less of their product (packaging) because consumers were buying less of the stuff their packaging packaged.

Seems reasonable, on the surface.

But then I thought about it a bit more … what is the assumption here? The logic is simple enough:

1. We are selling less
2. We are making less profit
3. Therefore marketing departments are ‘given’ less to spend on marketing (which, ironically, is what will be the most effective way to increase sales)

Inherent in this is the belief that a marketing budget is a resultant cost (a figure derived from profit that could then be used as something to spend) rather than a necessary business expense that must be met regardless of performance.

So why doesn’t marketing automatically deserve money?

Marketing should be an investment in promoting your key benefits and message to you market – it is a driver for increasing sales. So, excluding the idea that you run marketing exercises merely to boost the charity fund of the advertising agents, radio stations, printers, and promotional products companies of the world …  a properly run, strategic marketing campaign should give back more than you put into it.

Of course, you can’t always measure every campaign … but assuming that you have some kind of feel for ‘payoff’, you should have a fair notion of whether what you’re doing right now is working for you or not.

And if you don’t know what’s working or not, then how do you know how important what you’re doing right now is to your current position? Simply put, if you ditch your marketing in a time of decreased business activity, is it going to lead to no business activity? If your marketing is entirely responsible for the business you’re doing right now, what will happen if you get rid of it?

If your current marketing activity offers a payoff, then a shrinking market is more reason to keep actively marketing. You may need to tweak your mix, create more measurable marketing activities or even create marketing activities that offer extreme short-term benefits, but if something is working in essence, then why on Earth would you stop it altogether?

So instead of automatically cutting your marketing activities during times of decreased business, take the time to think outside the box and consider different marketing options instead. Remember that marketing does not have to be expensive to work!

Keeping your marketing alive might just be the best business decision you make all year, and anything that keeps you going while the competition slowly disappears is worth the effort, isn’t it?

Tagged with: • • •

Filed under: Business • Marketing • Sales

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!